Scarred
by The Warrior Poet
Summary: A revision of a three year old story. Hyrule faces a massive invasion from a deadly enemy. Diar, Heir to the Hyrulian Throne, is faced with a blood writ future. Will he prevail?
1. Chapter 1

Hyrule Castle awoke as it usually did: to the sound of swordplay.

It echoed across the turrets and towers of white stone and the sloping roofs of red tile. It was heard from the kitchens and the stables and the armory, and the arching bridges that linked tower to tower. It was heard in secret gardens where green ferns lay dappled with golden sunlight and tree leaves rustled with each breath of cool spring wind.

The yard from which the sounds ushered stood in the very heart of King Balid's centuries-old fortress, sheltered by the massive walls of Death Mountain granite. A veiled Sheikah drove a mailed youth backward with savage thrusts of his blunted rapier, eyes as cold and calm as a glacial lake. The youth was hard-pressed to keep the thrusts from hitting home, his larger longsword barely parrying the lighting-quick strikes of the slender Shiekah blade that was black as midnight.

"Ease!" Diar shouted in exhaustion, ever aware of his half-brother Taril's critical eyes. He would hear no end of this.

"In battle there is no reprieve. Counter-strike!" Lothli demanded, without a break in stride. The blade was a constant black blur. Diar tried to muster a counter-attack but there was no opening in which he could press one. He was under a constant maelstrom of Shiekan steel.

Diar parried a vertical strike that was aimed at the top of his head. The swords met with a high-pitched clang, and before he knew it Lothli's blade left his and came up under, slapping his wrist with a painful blow. Diar's sword escaped his grasp and clattered across the stone of the yard. The point of Lothli's rapier touched his throat. It was cold.

"Dead," Lothli said, pushing a strand of his snow-white hair away from his face. Diar heard Taril chuckling from where he stood by the wall of the armory. Lothli walked over to where Diar's longsword had fallen and picked it up. "How many times must I tell you boy? Never drop your sword. Drop your head before you drop your sword," The Shiekah swordmaster handed him the weapon.

Diar sheathed it forcefully. He took off his plumed halfhelm and held it in the crook of his arm as he walked over to the wall where Taril stood. "Well fought," Taril mocked, with that arrogant half-smile of his. Taril was seven years younger than he at thirteen, and had the golden hair and green eyes of the Queen Medb, who was the King's second wife. Diar's mother, the late Queen Nimya, had had raven-black hair. This Diar had inherited, along with his father's almond eyes.

"Shut your trap, piss-hair," Diar hissed. He could not abide his half brother, but Medb was far worse. She had always been bitter that he was the heir of Balid's throne instead of her own son. She held nothing but disdain for Diar, and the feeling was mutual. He had no idea how a child as sweet and beautiful as eight-year-old Zelda had sprung from that woman's loins.

Medb and her forebears had always been power-hungry, possessing great influence in court. When Diar came into power that would change. The fool woman should make more of an effort to stay on the good side of her future king. She probably still believed she could somehow convince his sire to make Taril the heir, but doubtless his father knew how much his youngest son would be manipulated by his wife's family.

"It's your turn laughing-boy," Lothli told Taril, "you find your brother's mistakes amusing but if my mind serves me correctly you have made the same transgressions before."

Taril placed his halfhelm over his head and drew his longsword, approaching Lothli where he stood in the middle of the yard. "He is my _half _brother," Taril corrected. Diar marveled at how very much he sounded like his mother when he emphasized the word 'half'.

"Is he now?" Lothli cocked his head to the side. "I nearly forgot. I thank thee, boy-of-laughter, for the reminder."

Taril did not seem happy with Lothli's tone.

"Lessons, boy," Lothli continued. "Lessons you have to learn, of blood and water and the fellowship of Man. Of loyalties and their value, of disloyalties and their pain."

"What are you talking about?" Taril said, his voice sounding bored.

"You will learn, amused one." Lothli said, and then he was as a flooded river, his sword lashing out. Taril thrust his sword up in time but it was no use. He was on his rump in the middle of the yard a moment later, dazed and confused with his sword several feet away. Diar grinned with satisfaction.

"The laughing-boy is a dead-boy, even as his _half _brother," Lothli said. He sheathed his rapier in its curved leather scabbard. "Do you see what your false pride has earned you?"

"That wasn't fair!" Taril shouted, his boy-voice echoing across the yard. "You attacked before I was ready!"

Lothli sighed. "Have you remembered nothing of what I have taught you? When swords are bared you must always be ready. When you see a potential enemy you must consider every outcome, survey every possibility. You must read his thoughts. Not with some mage magic or wizard spell, but with your eyes. Read his thoughts through his movements, his appearance. Consider how tense his muscles are, how intent his eyes.

"If you were as wary and intent as you should have been you would have noticed that my whole body was tensed in preparation for a lunge, and my knuckles were white where they grasped my sword-hilt. With all the hints I gave I might as well have announced them for the whole world," the swordmaster chastened.

Taril stood and marched out of the courtyard, fuming. Diar approached Lothli.

"Your drills are done for the day," the Shiekah said. "I hope tomorrow will find both of you more focused and ready to face my steel." He left from the opposite side of the yard, heading toward the stables in the bailey, where his horse waited to bear him back to his home in Kakariko.

Diar drew up the bucket from a nearby well and quenched his thirst before stripping off his mail and helm and hanging them in the armory beside the longsword. Today's lesson had ended much earlier than most, and the morning was still young.

He was walking about the castle in contemplation of how he would spend the rest of his day when he heard someone softly singing. He followed the voice to the delicate white tracery of the gate that led into Zelda's garden, nodded at the sentry that stood there, and entered. His sister's garden was just beginning to bloom after the long winter. There were blue and white winter roses, yellow cardinals, purple lilacs, pink forget-me-nots, and crimson desert wildflowers found only in the Gerudo Wastes and the Shifting Sands beyond. His sister was sitting upon a beautifully carved marble bench, singing a song in an elegant language that he had never before heard.

"Ah ninre, eahn lahr es e rey..." She stopped as she saw him approaching, a sad smile coming across her ever-somber face. Zelda was different than most girls her age. She did not laugh, only rarely did she smile. She spent most of her time in the library, pouring over old dusty tomes and withering scrolls, searching for answers to questions she would not reveal. Her azure eyes had a spark in them, a glow that spoke of immense knowledge of things long past and things still to come.

"Where did you hear that song?" Diar asked.

Zelda stood, smoothing out the wrinkles of her pink and white dress that was embroidered with a large triforce symbol. "I dreamt it. I don't know what the words mean; the language is very old." She pulled her golden braid over her shoulder.

Zelda was always having dreams. "Perhaps old Sovren will know the song. He has knowledge of many of the elder languages." Sovren was his father's steward, and had been a scholar since before Diar was born. He was in the library almost as much as Zelda was, and had written many books about Hyrule's history.

"Sovren doesn't know it, " Zelda said simply. Diar did not doubt her.

Zelda looked up at him with those wisdom-filled eyes. "You aren't ever going to leave, are you?" she asked.

"Of course I am not going to leave. Why would I leave?" Diar replied, taken off guard by the sudden question.

"I had a dream that you left...and when you came back, you were different," Zelda said. She hugged him around the waist. "Please don't leave."

"Different how?" He asked, patting her back. Her sudden worry was making him uneasy. She released him.

"Your face looked strange...as if it were burnt by a fervent heat. You never smiled, and your eyes looked angry. They had fire in them, but not the kind of fire in the hearth. It scared me," Zelda said. She cast her eyes downward.

"It was only a dream. Last night I had a dream that my horse was riding me," Diar said, trying to lighten the mood. He was glad to see a tight-lipped smile spread across his sister's face. Diar knelt and looked into her eyes. "Dreams are only dreams. Pay them no heed." He kissed her on the forehead and left her in the garden with the flowers and her dreams.

But as he lay down to sleep that night, weary from a long day of hunting in the Amtarin Wood, he dreamt a disturbing dream. He saw a roaring inferno, the flames violent and elegant, orange and red streamers licking at the air. He actually smelt the sulfur and brimstone, the foul smell of rotten eggs and melting rock. And from that pulsating wall of heat and flame reared the huge, horned head of a awesome black dragon, its eyes as hot and terrible as the fire from which it sprang. Those terrible red eyes bored straight into his soul, searching for something...

He awoke with a pounding heart. The dream was so vivid it took him a moment to remember where he was. But then he recognized the familiar surroundings of his bedchamber, and he stood, walking to the window and letting in some cool air. His chamber had become unusually stifling.

He looked out on the sleeping castle, watching the sentries walk the walls with their silver mail glinting in the cold moonlight. And he remembered what his sister had said in the garden that morning.

_"Your face looked strange...like it was burnt."_


	2. Chapter 2

The messenger was spotted from the western guard-turret as dusk settled over the rolling hills and rushing streams of Hyrule's heart. The rider bore King Balid's royal sigil, the golden eagle with the triforce clutched in its talons. Below the royal banner was a crimson pennant, indicating the urgency of the rider's message.

The west gate was swiftly opened, chains clinking as the bars were raised and the drawbridge was lowered. The hooves of the messenger's horse clattered across the cobbles of the King's Road, which shot straight as an arrow to the inner gate and the castle. The city folk tumbled to move out of the way of the galloping horse as it passed through Sage's Square and the Plaza of Fountains. The rider passed through the inner wall via a small postern by the side of the main gate and leaped from his exhausted steed.

"I must see the King! There is urgent news from the west!" the dust-covered rider shouted.

-------------

Diar stood behind his father's throne, listening to the tale the dusty rider had to tell.

They had been sitting down to dinner in the Great Hall with all of his father's retainers and servants when Faeor, one of his father's guardsmen, had come and whispered something in his father's ear. His father had stood and followed the guardsman, Sovren close behind. Five minutes later Sovren had returned and summoned Diar and Taril. They were both led into the throne room, where his father sat on his throne with the rider before him, elbow propped on one of the beautifully carved golden arms with his chin resting atop a clenched fist. All along the walls were the statues of the kings of old, standing atop their marble plinths and seeming to listen along with his father. In between the plinths were stained glass windows depicting various points in Hylian history; everything from the rise of the first Hero of Time to the great naval victory that ended the rebellion of the coast lords, only 87 years ago.

The rider finished his story and looked up at his father's face. King Balid was a stern, careworn man. His face was rugged and weathered, with a hairline scar above his right eyebrow received in a battle long before Diar was born. His eyes were almond--just like Diar's own--and his hair was light-brown peppered with gray.

"How many are dead?" the King asked.

"One hundred and fifty dead and seventy with major injuries, my King," the rider said. He was a courier of Balid's younger brother Bael, Diar's only surviving uncle on his father's side. He commanded a holdfast far to the west, near the Gerudo Wastes and the Shifting Sands.

"And you're sure they weren't thieves raiding out of the wastes?" Sovren asked from where he stood beside Diar. The old steward was small and withered, with a long white beard and not a spot of hair left on his pink scalp.

"Their numbers were too great, their formations too disciplined. They were Merrish Charioteers, with one legion of foot soldiers that didn't even have to march into the battle. We were routed on the second charge," the courier lamented, casting his eyes downward.

"And my brother?" the King asked.

"Lord Bael took a wound in battle but it was non-fatal. He has taken the remainder of your western army into the cliffs around The Falls of Nadarch. If we are to make a stand, that is the best place to do it," the messenger replied.

"And what have these Merrish been doing since you retreated to the cliffs?" the King asked, a hint of anger in his stern voice.

The messenger winced at the tone. "They have encamped themselves outside the walls of Bael's Holdfast but so far they haven't attempted to siege. They lack the timber to construct siege weapons. Your nephew Traegar has sealed the holdfast up tighter than a drum, but they've only enough food in the granaries to last four months."

"How in the name of the Goddesses did they find their way through the Shifting Sands? Those windy dunes have swallowed up more armies than can be counted," Sovren added.

"It doesn't matter how. They did, and we must deal with it, for this land and its people. Send the call to arms to all of my fief-lords. We must march west as soon as possible," his father said.

"_All_ of them?" Sovren asked. Diar did not blame him for his disbelief. With all of the fief-lord forces assembled his father could field thirty-thousand men, half of those knights and the other half archers and spearmen.

"All of them. We face a dire threat to our homeland and it must be met," Balid replied. "How long will it take for my army to be fully assembled at the Stones of Haarath?"

"Most can be mustered and ready to march in a day. It is a four day journey to the stone ruins. The fiefs at the foot of the Eastern Ranges will need an additional two days. With the time it takes for the riders to reach their destinations it will be two weeks before your forces are assembled and ready to attack," Sovren said.

"If they have found a safe passage through the Sands that means they can reinforce in the time it takes for us to gather our forces and march. By the time we reach the Wastes they could very well have an additional legion or more added to their ranks," Balid said. "Tell my couriers that they must ride like a swift autumn wind."

Sovren nodded and departed to write his messages and send off the King's riders. Balid shifted his gaze to the kneeling courier. "My thanks, sir. Chambers will be prepared for your. Fill your belly and take some rest."

"Thank you, your grace," the messenger said. One of the guardsmen led him off.

Balid stood and faced his sons. "What are your thoughts on this?" he asked. Before Diar could speak Taril stepped forward.

"We must crush them with one decisive blow. These Merrish dogs can't stand up to a large force of Hylian Knights in open battle. We will send them running back to their fanatic emperor, licking their wounds," Taril said.

Balid cocked an eyebrow at his youngest son and turned to Diar. "And what are your thoughts, Diar? Do you think we should give them open battle?"

Diar considered it for a moment. "Bael's Holdast sits atop a fairly steep hill. If we give them open battle they will have the high ground. I say we draw them away. Arrange our archers and spearmen within the rocks around the falls where your brother is encamped, then march the knights and foot soldiers into clear view of the holdfast.

"The Merrish should have no reason to suspect that we have split our forces. We will stand for one charge of their charioteers and then pretend to break, retreating for the rocks. They may give us pursuit, but it is more likely that they will return to the holdfast where they have the advantage. Once we are safe within the rocks we can stage token raids into their encampment under the cover of darkness. Eventually they will have no choice but to try and drive us out of the rocks. When they march into the rocks our hidden archers and spearmen will rain death on them. "

Diar clasped his hands behind his back and strolled to the window, looking out on the lights of the castle and the stars above. "Both plans have their advantages. If we give them open battle Traegar can open his gates and flank them. But that is only assuming that he has enough troops to do so. If we follow the safer plan of drawing them into the rocks the advantage will be ours. There are places in those rocks where ten archers can defend against an army. But that plan may take as long as six months, and we don't have that much time.

His father paused for a moment. "I will discuss this with Sovren. You are dismissed," Balid said. Diar made for the door but Taril lingered.

"When do we march father?" his brother asked.

"On the morn. But you will stay here. Diar will come with me."

"I am to stay? Why!" Taril shouted.

"I dislike that tone. You are too young to march to war. And besides, I need one of my heirs to stay here should the battle go ill," the King said, obviously irritated that his son was questioning his decisions.

"But--"

"No. You are to stay here, and that is all. You are dismissed."

Taril looked as if he were about to stay and argue. But the stern look on his father's face convinced him otherwise, and he pushed through the double doors at the end of the throne room. Diar followed but his father stopped him. "Stay a moment, son."

Diar turned and walked back to his father.

"This will be you're first battle," Balid said.

"Yes," Diar replied. His heart was filled with both excitement and fear.

"I can still recall my first battle," Balid said, his tone becoming soft as he remembered. "I was younger than you. Fifteen or perhaps sixteen, I cannot recall. The thieves of the Gerudo Wastes had become very bold, raiding into the plains and stealing cattle and sheep. My father at last grew tired of their incursions and sent the muster command to two of his greatest fief-lords, Huadrid and Madas. We marched west with two-thousand knights, mounted and armored.

"We drove them out from their hidden caves and stone cities, into the Gerudo plain. They put up a spirited fight upon those barren plains. Twice they threw back our charge, but in the end they were overwhelmed by the strength of our heavy horse. They broke like a twig underfoot." His father sighed.

"Hyrule faces dark times, my son. The Merrish are not undisciplined thieves. Merr's court is weak with decadence and corruption but the emperor's legions are strong and steadfast. They are led by generals who have commanded dozens of successful campaigns. Rannibal, Trazyr, Grazyn...these are dangerous men, among the greatest military minds of our age. These men do not make mistakes."

His father's words cast a dark shadow over Diar's heart. He could think of nothing to say.

"You had best go take some rest before we march. Do not let my words trouble you...I am just an old, worried man," his father said. Balid's footsteps echoed across the empty throne room as he departed, his brow still furrowed in deep contemplation.

Despite his father's request the words did trouble him. Balid was a strong, confident man. To hear such a man vocalize such doubts was troubling. Diar left the now empty throne room and made his way to his bedchambers. He sat down upon his feather bed, thinking. Thinking about war and swords, and an empire far away.

Sleep did not come.


End file.
